His father suffered from alcoholism, a factor leading to the decision by Ivan's 22-year-old mother to place the children into state care.
[3] Georges Mora, of Tolarno Galleries, St Kilda was among the first to see potential in Durrant's work, giving him $300 in cash to buy paints, and his first exhibition in 1970.
[1] Durrant spent a short time working in a prosthetics laboratory at Royal Melbourne Hospital and was able to create lifelike body parts.
This skill was carried over into an ability to create convincingly accurate sculptures of ears, hands, pig heads and various cuts of meat.
[3] His work has ranged from paintings to photography, public performance and installation art, short films and sculpture.
Much of his work has been based on concepts relating to socio-political themes; for example animal rights or the social effects of war.
[4][5][8][9] In an interview with ABC Online, Durrant's daughter says that installations and performance art were still a very new form of artistic expression, and "to have something as extreme as an animal carcass put at the National Gallery of Victoria was just totally shocking to people".
[2] Prior to the event, Durrant had discussed with close friend and mentor, abstractionist artist Asher Bilu, the concept of 'a more confrontational art 'happening' - to kill a cow before an audience'.
[4] 'The concept included actively drawing in the mass media to cover the event, thereby pushing it beyond the realm of high art'.
[10] On the morning of 26 May 1975, Beverley was slaughtered in a cattle yard in Wheelers Hill, 'not far from where the Monash Gallery of Art stands today,' was then 'loaded onto a utility van, and with news crew in tow' was driven to the NGV, her carcass dumped in the forecourt.
[10] Durrant informed the staff at the NGV front desk that he was donating a sculpture, and 'asked whether they would consider leaving it in place for a few days'.
[10] The NGV arranged for the carcass to be promptly removed and the site thoroughly cleaned before 'the scrum of Melbourne's social elite arrived'.
'"[11] Durrant's daughter states that she once considered such an interpretation (in relation to the Vietnam War) "a bit of a retrospectively applied stretch," but adds that "the cow endures as a metaphor for the inhumanity and carelessness with which we treat life generally and the extent to which we can become complacent and inured to this.
This event, like other similar happenings demonstrated the point that "as humans we tend to dissociate animals from the whole process of killing".